The Most Popular Stories of the Week
Plus: a very small sample size Instagram V. TikTok segment.
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#6: Bookish Items to Help You Manage Your TBR List [Book Riot]
#5: Six Cult Classics You Have to Read [The Atlantic]
#4: Can You Find the 15 Book Titles Hidden in This Text? [The New York Times]
#3: Inside Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Spotify Pop-Up Library [Elle]
#2: Bookmory Review: Better Than Goodreads, But With Some Caveats [Book Riot]
#1: The Most Beautiful Bookstores in the World [Conde Nast Traveler]
Over the last week, I have been playing around with short-form videos on both Book Riot’s Instagram and Book Riot’s TikTok account. Sorta just to learn some of the tools and be a little more fluent in these kinds of content spaces. I have made nothing viral or amazing, but the thing I have been most struck by is how the same video does so much differently in each spot (again the following sizes are so different that absolute numbers aren’t useful. Talking relative performance).
In short, there is very little correlation. I have posted the same 10 short videos to each platform. Here is how they stack up in terms of popularity on each.
Instagram:
#10: 5 of The Very Best Quotes from Barbara Kingsolver
#9: Anne Lamott on the Particular Magic of Books
#8: When The Book You Are Reading Matches the Vibes
#7: Shogun Deluxe Edition
#6: How Much Do You Think This Signed, First Edition of Klara and the Sun is Worth?
#5: Tired Succession Meme
#4: No Jury Would Convict Her
#3: The 10 Best-Selling Science Fiction and Fantasy Book at Powell’s Right Now
#2: Curated Book Bundles
#1: My Current Favorite Book to Recommend Right Now
TikTok:
#10: How Much Do You Think This Signed, First Edition of Klara and the Sun is Worth?
#9: Shogun Deluxe Edition
#8: Tired Succession Meme
#7: Curated Book Bundles
#6: When The Book You Are Reading Matches the Vibes
#5: My Current Favorite Book to Recommend Right Now
#4: 5 of The Very Best Quotes from Barbara Kingsolver
#3: The 10 Best-Selling Science Fiction and Fantasy Book at Powell’s Right Now
#2: Anne Lamott on the Particular Magic of Books
#1: No Jury Would Convict Her
This is a small sample size, but it is hard to see ANY correlation between what performs on one platform versus the other. This makes sense I guess when you remember that each has their own algorithm that priortizes different things, but I would think that people that watch book-related content on each platform would be relatively similar. Not sure that there is any lesson or takeaway here, but thought it was interesting—and confounding.
Anyway, you can follow Book Riot on Instagram or on TikTok if you want to see what comes next.